WASHINGTON - The United States has brokered the release of three Americans it said had been wrongfully detained in China for many years, the White House said in a statement on Wednesday.
The White House national security council named the three as Mark Swidan, Kai Li and John Leung. All of the US citizens it deemed to have been wrongly detained in China were now home, it added.
China has said that such cases are handled according to law.
Further details on what the three Americans had been charged with were not immediately available.
The news site Politico said the deal had taken years to finalise and that in return, a number of Chinese citizens detained in the United States would also be released.
The New York Times quoted unnamed US officials as saying that discussions had centred on releasing Xu Yanjun, a Chinese intelligence officer serving prison time in the United States.
Xu was the first Chinese spy indicted and arrested overseas and brought to trial in the United States, according to the Justice Department.
A US official said President Joe Biden had pressed for the return of the three Americans when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping this month at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.
In September, China freed David Lin, an American pastor who had been in jail there since 2006.